Wow. This thread made my day. In the end, even being a handloader, if there's a factory cartridge that I can buy brass for, load and shoot, and a wildcat that I have to form and use some voodoo in determining the load, which one do you think I'm going to choose? Pretty simple. Your SLR has about...
This argument is like to wear or not wear a seatbelt. You will have those that say "I haven't ever worn a seatbelt and I am fine." You're not fine because you never wore a seatbelt, you're fine in spite of NOT wearing a seatbelt. Same goes with this break in voodoo. The barrel doesn't shoot...
I've seriously thought about carrying a revolver. Much easier to hide since it's not shaped like a brick. We all dream of the firefight where we need to change magazines, but in reality that rarely if ever happens.
I'll keep following the Gale McMillan break in procedure. Just shoot the thing. I believe that more rifles get ruined by these elaborate cleaning procedures than anything else. I was brought up believing that I had to keep running patches through until they came out clean.
Then, when I started...
I have 2 little bastard brakes, one on a 7 mag and one on a .260. to be honest, the recoil reduction is great, but they do zero to combat muzzle rise. I would also check out muzzlebrakesandmore.com he is a nice guy and is local to me here in Boise.
I've killed 12 elk in my lifetime, none with a bullet bigger than a 162, most with a 154 SST, and one with a .260 and a 143 ELD-X. Its all about shot placement.
I killed a spike this last year at 450-500 yards (couldn't get my damn rangefinder out of my jacket but when I saw the first bullet hit right below his belly I figured out how far he was). Second shot, line back up on his shoulder, send it, dude turns to go uphill. Bullet enters ham, destroys...
I honestly think it's the dissolution of the nuclear family. We've had semi automatic and automatic firearms available to the public now for over 100 years. Why is it that all of these shootings have been happening in just the last 20?